HISTORY, ROMANCE AND...CATS!
Grace Elliot leads a double life as a vet by day and author of intelligent historical fiction by night. Grace is an avid reader and believes that smart people need to read romance - as an antidote to the modern world!
Grace is also obsessed by all things feline.

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Sunday, 5 April 2015

Traditions and Superstitions: New Clothing at Easter

Happy Easter!

A chocolate egg bigger than my head – that’s what hubs gave me this Easter. He knows
the way to my heart! Aside from the importance of Easter as a religious
festival, it is also associated with chicks, chocolate, and in previous century….new
clothes.

Traditionally,
Easter was linked to the wearing of new clothes. Although this was also
linked to other times of the year such as New Year and Christmas day, with its
symbolism of renewal and rebirth, Easter was a key time to start afresh with
new garments.

This tradition
was mentioned in 1662 when Samuel Pepys wrote in his dairy about getting new
clothes for his wife “against Easter”. Previous to this, Shakespeare hints at the
importance in Romeo and Juliet, 1597,
when Mercutio asks, “Didst though not
fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter?”

Apart from
anything else, it seems one penalty if you didn’t respect this superstition was
that you ran the risk of being fouled upon by a bird.

“It is deemed essential by many people
to wear some new article of dress, if only a pair of gloves or a new ribbon;
for not to do so is considered unlucky; and the birds will be angry with you.” Writings from 1911

This is borne
out by Burne, writing in 1883

“…he used to look out anxiously for
rooks on Easter Day, and run to shelter if he heard on cawing, in spite of his
mother’s habitual care to provide each of her family with some new garment for
Easter wearing.”

The wearing
of new clothes on Easter Sunday, also ties into to other superstitions regarding
garments. There was a strong superstition that to be lucky, new clothes should
first be worn to church for a sort of “blessing”. The consequence was to call
bad luck upon your head.

“You must be careful not to put on any
new article of clothing for the first time on a Saturday, …or some severe
punishment will ensue. One person put on his new boots on a Saturday, and on
Monday broke his arm.“
Jefferies. 1889

But if you
couldn’t afford new, but bought second hand clothes, there was a way to
counteract any lingering back luck. If you bought a garment which contained money
in a pocket, this ensured prosperity for the rest of the year. Seemingly those
selling second hand clothes cottoned on fast and learnt that simply by placing
a small coin in the pocket they could inflate the price of the garment for sale!

5 comments:

I'd forgotten this but my family believed this superstition - in fact there's a family story that when a bird pooped on my grandfather as he was bringing in the coal on an Easter Sunday he drew his new hankie from his pocket and waved it at the malevolent bird to show he had something new to wear.

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